Warrenton Va.           

October 25/63.

                       

Dear Sister.

              You will be a little surprised I think to get another letter from me dated at this place, are you not a little? Well! we are here once more and in the very same spot we were in when we left the fifteenth of September. each company have the very identical street now they had then and the greater part of the men are on the same spot they occupied at that time. I have not got my tent in the same place but close to it. Dont you think I am the most unlucky fellow that ever was? Here I have "been done gone" and lost my old woman once more. I wrote you last week that Lewis was on the pioneer corps but that we tented together just the same except when on the march. Well! last / Thursday when we got here the Col. told them they had better keep together by themselves and not return to their companies. So you see where I was again, no old gal to sleep with these cold nights. But then I wasnt so bad off after all, for the very next day my first wife, Miss Loomis, came back from Brigade H^d Quarters, and we went to keeping house again right off. He has four pieces of tent and I two, so both together we can have a very large house, or one of the usual size and two thicknesses. Loomis went off yesterday on detail (fourteen men from co. I) after rations and has not got back yet. be back tonight I guess. When the rebels fell back from Centreville they destroyed the railroad for a good ways so now our rations are brought up by mules from some where in the vicinity of Manassas Junction. three thousand men are at work on it and it wont be long before it will be in running order again. When we left Culpepper we took with us rations for eight days. every day or two additions have been made to it in order to / keep that amount by us all the time. we have now on hand or supposed to at least nine or ten days rations, but there is not a man in this whole regiment that can show tomorrow morning one single hard cracker over three days. the wet weather has spoilt some, and the men have eat more on the march than they would in camp besides our rations when we are doing the most work are always the smallest, bread and meat with coffee and sugar being all that can be kept along with us. Our bread for the last month has been very poor, being wormy and buggy. it seems to be growing poorer still instead of better. some times we get a lot condemned on that account, but whats the use in that all we can do is draw another lot of just the same character so we have to eat it. but come to examine it a little and it dont take but a few to fill a fellow up. I think we shall not lay here a very great while. we are going somewhere I think by the looks of things but I should like to stay long enough to get that box with the shirts they have not come in sight yet. we got our overcoats / yesterday just in the right time for it was cold and an old N. Easter was laying the dust. its fair to day but cold as Greenland. they charge a pretty good price for them this year nine dollars and a half I did not have to pay for one last year as Powers fitted me out with one free of cost. There will not be quite as big a clothing bill in my favor next year as there was this. Your letter got along last Friday morning with the stamps. I will send one back to you does it look natural. We did not get back here quite soon enough for chesnuts. they were pretty much all gone. Ewell's Corps were camped on this ground about here in their late advance on Meade and got about all the chesnuts there was. I dont see how they do to get along nothing at all to shelter them in stormy weather but their thin blankets. the fifteenth Louisiana reg^t were in the woods close by here. they cut down big trees and piled rails on them and set them afire thats all they had to keep warm with. if we stay in a place three days it will show for a long time we have been there but the rebels leave no marks except ash heaps. I should think they would be tired of the war. I have got a case knife. I found one last week. A man in Co H. died night before last by drinking whiskey. L. C. C.

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